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"Stop moving."
Cade's hand locked around my wrist before I could yank the cable from the phone. His grip was warm, precise, just enough pressure to keep me still without bruising. I hated that I noticed.
"Let go," I said.
"You pull that now, the file corrupts. Then we're both dead."
His face was inches from mine, bent over the workbench where I'd cracked the phone's casing open. The soldering iron was still hot in my other hand. I could smell gun oil on his jacket and something sharper underneath—sweat, maybe, or the kind of exhaustion that came from dying too many times in one night.
"How many runs have you watched me die in?" I asked.
His jaw tightened. "Enough."
"Give me a number."
"Six."
I let the iron cool on the stand. The file was halfway loaded, a progress bar crawling across the phone's cracked screen. Nix had gone quiet for once, which meant either the AI was fried or it was listening.
"Six different ways?" I asked.
"Three repeats. You don't learn."
"Maybe you don't teach."
His thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist, right over my pulse. I felt it jump and knew he felt it too. He didn't let go.
"Run Three," he said, voice flat. "You take the fire escape. Sniper on the opposite roof puts one through your neck before you hit the second landing."
I swallowed. "Run Four?"
"You stay inside. They burn the building."
"Run Five?"
His eyes flicked to mine, and for half a second I saw something crack open behind all that control. "You trust me. We make it four blocks. Then you take a round meant for me and bleed out in my arms before the reset kicks in."
The progress bar hit sixty percent. My hand was still trapped under his.
"Why do you remember?" I asked. "Why not me?"
"I don't know."
"Bullshit."
"I don't," he said, and this time I believed him. "When the reset happens, I keep everything. You start clean. It's been that way since the first loop."
"Then how do you know it's me? How do you know I'm the anchor?"
His hand finally released mine, but he didn't step back. "Because every reset starts the moment you pick up that phone. I've tried stopping you. Twice. The loop just rewinds further."
The file hit seventy percent. The screen flickered, and a new line of text appeared:
DECRYPTING CORE METADATA...
"What's an anchor?" I asked.
"Someone the tech locks onto. A trigger point."
"You're saying I'm the reason we're stuck?"
"I'm saying you're the reason the loop exists at all."
I wanted to punch him. I wanted to throw the phone through the window and walk away. Instead I watched the progress bar crawl to eighty percent and tried to ignore the way his breath was still too close to my neck.
"If I die before Run Seven," I said, "what happens?"
His face went blank. Not calm. Empty. Like he'd already practiced this answer and hated every word.
"You don't want to know."
"Yeah, I really do."
"The loop breaks," he said. "Permanently. Everyone inside the radius dies. That includes about forty thousand people."
The soldering iron slipped from my hand and clattered onto the bench. I didn't pick it up.
"You're lying," I said.
"I'm not."
"Then why the hell are you keeping me alive?"
"Because you're the only one who can stop it."
The file hit ninety percent. The phone started vibrating, a low buzz that made the loose screws on my bench rattle. Nix's voice crackled back to life, distorted and sharp.
"Hostiles inbound. Twelve seconds."
Cade's hand went to his gun. I grabbed the phone.
"Where?" he asked.
"North side," Nix said. "Two drones, street level. They're not here for the view."
I shoved my chair back and killed the lights. Cade moved to the window, stayed low, checked the street below. His whole body had shifted—looser, faster, like he'd done this a hundred times. Maybe he had.
"They scanning for the phone?" I asked.
"Scanning for you," Nix said. "The phone's just the receipt."
The progress bar hit ninety-five percent. I could hear the drones now, a high whine cutting through the rain outside. Cade pulled a second gun from his belt and held it out to me, grip first.
"You know how to use this?" he asked.
"I fix them. I don't shoot them."
"Learn fast."
I took the gun. It was heavier than I expected, still warm from sitting against his ribs. My hands were shaking. His weren't.
"How many times have I done this?" I asked.
"Done what?"
"Held a gun. Tried to fight."
He looked at me for a long moment, and I saw it again—that crack, that flicker of something human under all the cold.
"Twice," he said. "You missed both times."
"Great."
"But you didn't run."
The drones hit the window half a second later. Glass exploded inward, and I hit the floor on instinct. Cade fired twice, quick clean shots that turned one drone into sparking scrap before it cleared the frame. The second one veered left, targeting laser sweeping across the ceiling.
I rolled under the bench and came up on the other side. The phone was still in my hand, progress bar frozen at ninety-eight percent. The drone swung toward me, and I did the only thing I could think of—I threw the soldering iron.
It hit the drone's sensor cluster dead-on. The machine jerked sideways, recalibrating, and Cade put two rounds through its core. It dropped like a stone.
Silence. Then the phone's screen flared white, and the file opened.
Footage. Old footage. A hospital room, sterile white walls, a woman on a bed holding a newborn. The timestamp read twenty-six years ago. I couldn't see the woman's face, but I could see the baby's wristband.
Quinn, M.
My birth name. My file.
"What the hell is this?" I whispered.
Cade moved beside me, gun still raised, eyes on the broken window. But I saw his shoulders lock when he glanced at the screen.
The footage skipped forward. Same hospital. Different angle. Two people in dark suits standing over the woman, who wasn't holding the baby anymore. One of them was talking, mouth moving, no sound. The other one held a briefcase.
Then the text flashed across the bottom of the screen, cold and clinical:
ANCHOR RECOVERED. PROCEED TO PHASE TWO.
The phone went black.
I looked up at Cade. His face was unreadable again, but his hand was still on his gun, and his knuckles were white.
"You knew," I said.
"No."
"You knew they took me."
"I didn't."
"Then what the hell did you know?"
He finally looked at me, and for the first time since he walked into my shop, I saw fear.
"I knew your name was on the file," he said. "I didn't know you were the payload."
Footsteps. Fast. Multiple floors below, coming up the stairwell. Nix's voice cut through the static.
"Run Seven starts in ninety seconds. If you're still here, you won't make Run Eight."
Cade grabbed my arm and hauled me toward the back door. I pulled free.
"What's Phase Two?" I asked.
He didn't answer. He just looked at me like I'd already asked that question five times before, and he still didn't have an answer I'd believe.
"Move," he said.
The footsteps hit my floor.
I moved.
But the last thing I saw before we hit the stairwell was the phone screen flickering back to life, one final line of text crawling across the footage:
SUBJECT Quinn, M. — IMPLANTATION SUCCESSFUL. ACTIVATE ON TRIGGER EVENT.